


Awakening

by emmram



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Post-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 23:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5559973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmram/pseuds/emmram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Awakening is slow, and difficult, even when we have something to wake up for. </p><p>[Set right after the end of the film]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: HUGE SPOILERS for the film, as it is set immediately after the end. Mild references to the prequels. Let me know if the characterisation is even vaguely believable, and feel free to point out/correct any mistakes you find, for I am unaware of the comics/novels/extra stuff released along with the movie.
> 
> Ten whole years since I last wrote SW fic, and it was super-fun and much easier than I thought it would be to step back into this universe :D

**_Awakening_ **

-

When Finn wakes up, he can still feel the cold burn of a lightsabre across his back, terror rising like bile at the back of his throat, and the bone-chilling realisation that in trying to run away, he’s only succeeded in jumping out of an airlock without so much as a mask on. He opens his eyes with _Rey_ on his lips, but it’s Poe sitting next to him.

Poe smiles at him like he’s got the whole galaxy to give and then some more; he tells him about Rey’s mission and about Finn’s new place among the Resistance. He tells Finn about the moons of Endor and Yavin; the jungles of Kashyyk and the planet-wide city that’s Coruscant—artifice built upon artifice until nobody remembers the original terrain of the planet that they first colonised. He talks of the Corellian Run and of a thousand legacies that began and crashed along its way; he talks until his voice cracks and Finn’s feeling a little out of breath just listening to him.

“Sounds like there’s a lot of places I gotta see,” Finn says, thickly.

Poe doesn’t hesitate for a second; he grins brilliantly. “I could use a co-pilot,” he says. “And you pick up things real quick.”

Finn smiles back and wonders how quickly _running away_ has become _running towards_.

-

Poe Dameron is sinking in the sand every time he closes his eyes.

He can’t ever remember being on-planet for more than a few weeks at a time since he was twelve and found that sitting in the pilot’s seat was like entering a home he never knew he had. The terror of waking up in a sandy tomb, bound without sight, hearing or voice, his burned back alight with agony, is worse than every nightmare Kylo Ren tried to pull from his head. The all-encompassing darkness, the relentless heat, fighting for every breath while he burned from within and without, casting, desperately, for the _reason_ why he was even _there,_ why he was _dying_ —

 _Pain can be a cruel master_ , Luke Skywalker had once told him, _but it can help us. Fear, however—it can make us forget ourselves. Fear can make us become less than nothing._

Now, Poe’s no Jedi, but he knows quite a bit about concentration and discipline and inhabiting every single moment with your full being. Even talented hotshot pilots aren’t exempt from the basic rules. So while the memory of the crash is frightening all on its own, the fact that he couldn’t remember the mission or the hapless, hopelessly brave stormtrooper who helped him escape for days _after_ he was removed from the bacta tank—well, that frightens him more.

Even now, although he is both grateful and relieved that Finn survived and appears to have completed Poe’s mission for him, he looks at Finn and thinks of sand and fear and the terrible regret of a friendship that almost ended before it could start. He talks to distract himself, like he always does, and when Finn, quiet till the very end, asks to see the open universe that Poe has come to love so very much, Poe doesn’t hesitate.

Maybe this time Finn can help Poe leave Jakku behind, once and for all.

-

Luke Skywalker does not move for a long, long time, but Rey doesn’t mind—she is, after all, used to waiting all her life. She takes the time, instead, to feel the sharp wind on her skin, the gentle warmth of the sun, the taste of salt on her tongue. She knows in an abstract, intellectual way—that she can sometimes call ‘memory’ if she tries hard enough—that every one of the millions of planets in the galaxy is unique, with different orbits and different skies and different climate systems and different geologies. Even so, her universe has been harsh white skies and vast expanses of burning sand for so very, very long that to stand here feels like stepping into a daydream.

She almost doesn’t want the moment to end.

Rey tries to do what Maz told her, seemingly ages ago—to close her eyes and simply _know_ the Force. She still doesn’t know what that even means; everything that she did in the Starkiller base—or even on the _Millennium Falcon_ —seemed to have stemmed from some cross between instinct and fear and determination and a deep, fervent _hope_. If nothing else, Rey knows this: she survived all those years alone and yearning on Jakku because she could hope and never stopped hoping; her embittered camp-mates, their carapaces already worn smooth and thin by the relentless sand, had first called her ‘naïve’, then a whole host of derogatory names, but she _never stopped_. Perhaps that is what the Force is, more than the lightsabres or the X-wings or the dark masks: that pure, unhindered belief. Her faith in the future. Her trust in Finn.

Rey swallows, hands over the lightsabre to Luke Skywalker, and musters a new hope.

-

Kylo Ren lies in the snow and dreams.

He’s fifteen years old, thin Padawan braid slung over one shoulder, following Master Skywalker as he takes him lower and lower into the bowels of Coruscant. He’s terrified as they keep descending to the lower levels—he’s heard too many stories about these inhospitable levels that lay like toxic, perfectly preserved tombs of the Old Republic—but he’s a Jedi, and Jedi don’t show fear. He takes a deep breath, gathers the Force around him with effort.

“Master?” he calls, for what seems like the tenth time. “Uncle Luke, where are we going?”

Master Skywalker turns briefly to offer him a half-smile, then opens an ancient door with a wave of his hand. They enter a vast, dusty atrium which appears empty save for a battered black breathing apparatus on a short pillar.

“This is the old Jedi Temple, Ben,” Master Skywalker says. “Home of the Order—where Master Yoda, Master Kenobi learned and taught everything they knew.” He stops, then smiles. “Where your grandfather trained to become who he became.”

Kylo stares at the mask. _Darth Vader_. “He was seduced,” he says, his throat suddenly dry as ashes. “By the Emperor. By the Dark Side.”

“He was seduced, persuaded, enlightened—the etymology doesn’t matter.” Kylo looks up, and it isn’t Master Skywalker talking anymore, but Snoke. “What Anakin Skywalker did was make a choice. He was—” Snoke’s eyes flutter closed. “— _exquisite_. His power is unmatched, even by his own son. But you know what they say.” He smiles a slow, slow smile. “Some things tend to skip a generation.”

“I’m scared,” Kylo says finally. The words feel small and foreign on his tongue.

“I know,” Snoke says.

“I’m scared of being the only one to know—to _feel_ all of it—”

“I know.”

“Sometimes I—sometimes I think even Uncle Luke can’t really help _explain_ —”

“I know.” Snoke places a hand on his head, then lowers it until he’s closed Kylo’s eyes. “I can help you.”

Kylo Ren wakes up screaming as cold steel cuts into his flesh.

-

Leia Organa stands on the bridge of the starship she commands and stares at the cold blackness of space, contemplating loss. She has lost her home and her family many times over, shackled either by thugs or by duty so that she is forced to watch them be destroyed and yet carry on as though some ineffable part of her hasn’t been destroyed with them as well. And she _has_ carried on, hasn’t she—because of the billions that look to her for guidance, because of the Force, because of some terrible, cancerous hope that refuses to die no matter what the universe does to it, because of _all of it_.

And yet, now—

Her lips tremble. Her eyes sting. Her knees creak, and there’s a fist inside her chest, crushing her heart and lungs. She can’t breathe. She can’t _breathe_. She can’t—

“General Organa,” says a young, crisp voice beside her.

Leia, who has become a hero, a legend and a myth in just half a lifetime, swallows her universe of grief with the ease of practice, and turns.

-

Luke Skywalker finally clears his throat. “It’s a pity,” he says, “that there isn’t a swamp near here.”

**_Finis_ **


End file.
